Hope, Healing, and a Rescue Cat

Shedding Season

It’s shedding season. I pluck tufts of Hannah’s white belly fur from the carpeted living room floor in the garret where we live. With its rounded metal teeth, the cat-brush devours a three-course meal: brown and blonde and crème cat hairs. As a few cotton-ball shaped fur puffs escape my grasp, drift through the air like clouds, I think about the things we shed.

We shed personal objects: a writing desk, a bookcase, a couch. Last summer, when my landlord died and the house where Hannah and I lived was sold, I had to leave these items behind, because they would not fit through the door of my new residence, which, some say, with its slanted ceilings and two-by-three foot refrigerator, must have once been the maid’s quarters.

We shed what has worn through: an old pair of socks, winter gloves and a coat, or beliefs based in the past. When I was diagnosed with PTSD, when I began to face my history, I shed the layers of denial I had wrapped around myself for years, until I reached the truth that lay at my core.

We shed people – when we move or when they die, when they change or when we grow. When I started to get healthy, I shed a lot of people from my life like a tree letting go of its leaves. I examined my losses; some days, as I grieved, I wondered what were my gains?

While watching Hannah, a former landlady once told me she would never adopt a cat who “has had something happen to it: I don’t want to deal with any baggage,” she said, “I want a cat with a clean slate.” I wondered if that was how she felt about people, too.

Everyone “has had something happen” – a breakup, a death, an illness, an accident. While it leaves a scar, the experience does not define who we are.

Four years ago, Hannah would not allow me to pet her except in her kitty bed, and then I could only touch her back. She did not trust me, or anyone (then again, neither did I). Now, Hannah flops herself upon the floor, stretches her paws as far out as they will go, and turns her belly, her most vulnerable self, to me. She purrs contentedly as I rub her gently.

Hannah has shed her distrust and revealed her core: she’s a loving, affectionate, gentle soul (of course this does not stop her from stalking and slaying mice and moths).

Hannah, Pantry Mouse Bouncer

Just as the caterpillar sheds his cocoon, sometimes we have to let go of what seems to be everything, in order to be who we really are, in order to fly, free.

— TLS

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what’s more important; the inside or the outside? does what’s inside affect what we see outside and viceversa? Ah Trace, you got it right. You and Hannah are the wisest team going. I love this post best of all!

I’m so glad to hear you like this post! The Hannah Grace blog is brand new and so I’m trying to establish for readers the various flavors of the book. Thanks so much for posting your comment! More to come…

I love idea that we shed things — animals do it naturally; they shed coats. As if they can shed the past with the change of seasons. There was an episode of my all time favorite TV show, Northern Exposure, where Shelly was shedding her skin; she thought she was allergic to Holling, her significant other, but the native American healer said she was just taking on a her new self. I think there is a connection between Hannah’s shedding and your PTSD. You can shed the past — the process is what changes us.

Mary, your reference to the Northern Exposure episode is a great one!! What you say about process is SO true. I think “shedding” is not exclusive to cats or people with PTSD but is something we all experience at some point in our lives, if we can push through the fear to allow for transformation. Thanks for writing in!

Hello to Hannah from the owner (mother) of Wang Xifeng. When I get out the cat brush, Xifeng gets very interested, and lies down on the living room carpet and allows me to brush her. But there is a limit: when two or three balls of fluff have accumulated, she starts batting and spitting at me and I have to stop. BTW, I use up reams of lint-roller paper to clean up the hair she has shed. I love your use of cat hair as an analogy for letting go.